The Nokia Lumia 920, left, and 820 Windows smartphones are displayed during a joint event with Microsoft in New York City last September. / Spencer Platt, Getty Images

by Scott Martin, USA TODAY

by Scott Martin, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nokia shares rocketed nearly 17% today after the Finnish company said its mobile phone business and Lumia model have notched up better than expected results in the current quarter.

Shares of Nokia rose 16.9% to $4.38 in midday trading after the company issued the positive prelimary guidance on its fourth quarter.

"We are pleased that Q4 2012 was a solid quarter where we exceeded expectations and delivered underlying profitability in Devices & Services and record underlying profitability in Nokia Siemens Networks," Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement.

The No. 2 mobile phone company worldwide forecasts it will sell 86.3 million devices in the quarter. Of those, Nokia said it expects to report total smartphone sales of 15.9 million, of which 4.4 million will come from Lumia units running Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system.

Nokia has been steadily losing ground to Samsung and Apple. The company sells mostly feature phones and is moving to capture sales of smartphones.